Communication

Cities as an innovation forum

11 of June of 2014

Citizens are currently witnessing the rapid development of buildings, services, technologies and environment. This is becoming one of the main sources of innovation for companies like Ferrovial.

Internally, programs like Zuritanken collect innovative ideas proposed by our own colleagues, suggesting specific issues and challenges. Externally, we support collaborative initiatives such as the Cities Open Challenge, a process that allows us to maintain our status as promoters of innovative dynamics.

Bearing in mind that our main focus is to implement innovation at the urban level, our company has been working with seven Spanish cities (La Coruña, Logroño, Málaga, Santander, Sevilla, Valencia and Vitoria) in order to identify innovative solutions to various specific challenges. Therefore, it is all about creating a meeting place for entrepreneurs where they can present their solutions and, when selected winners, have the opportunity to implement their projects.

Ferrovial brings to the program its know-how and its managerial experience in this field. Our goal is to make this initiative a success, so that the cities involved will be able to transform and to improve the delivery of its urban services, resulting in a better quality of life for all the citizens.

In this regard, we must highlight the fact that citizens themselves can and must be more and more involved in the urban management process, identifying new communication channels that help improve our cities. This is why we must make sure that such developments are promoted in an innovate way.

Bindogs

In light of these developments, initiatives such as the BINDOGS project are certainly worth mentioning. This original idea was developed in the Spanish city of Guadalajara, and consists of a network of intelligent bins devoted to collect dog excrements. This bins award rebates and bonus points to those citizens who use them properly. This serves as an accelerator of the innovation process, since it enables us to engage people in the difficult yet relevant task of improving our cities.

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